This Rose of Sharon was a gift to my Mom for her front yard, and it has come up and started its bloom season thanks to all the heat and rainfall that Amsterdam has had lately. A member of the Hibiscus family, the Rose of Sharon is one of those ubiquitous shrubs that often gets overused, but its happy colors and ease of coaxing into bloom make it worth growing. This variety is not as common, so it takes pride of place at my Mom’s garden. I love how the bloom of the featured picture hides bashfully behind a leaf – a coy, shy bit of beauty in a summer of quiet healing.
While my Dad was always the family’s main gardener during my childhood with his vegetable expertise, Mom knew her way around the annuals. Her garage-side garden of impatiens was a simple but spectacular summer tradition. In her current home, she’s made the gardens her own. I’ve given her a few more Rose of Sharon plants, as well as a couple of lilacs that are still trying to take hold in the rather inhospitably-humid summer we’ve had this year. She’s also been able to grow the spectacular love-lies-bleeding plants that Dad used to grow from seeds he gathered one year in Ogunquit. That’s something I’ve never been successful at doing.
Next spring we’ll look into refining the gardens she has now – a pine tree that my brother planted too close to the patio needs to go before it becomes unmanageable, and an unused fire pit will have to be repurposed as well. I’ll advise her to take photos and write down measurements now, so we can remember when snow is on the ground and we are desperately leafing through flower catalogs hoping for a hasty return of spring and planning for the next season of the garden.
